I have been experiencing déjà vu.

It's as we pack up our boxes and wrote on the side with black markers: Kitchen stuff, Books, Pants. As we coerce our furious black cat to take her sedating tablets and, as if six years hadn’t passed, try not to jostle her as we run through the labyrinthine Amsterdam airport to make a short connecting flight with KLM. As we take a taxi through our new city’s dark streets, craning our necks to see beautifully brutalist apartment blocks from the 60’s and 70s, lit up with Christmas fairy lights.

There’s the same "big shop" at a local supermarket with Google Translate open on our phone and the same wait at the till while we’ve no idea if we’ve spent £50 or £150. It’s all the new home, new country things, organising wifi, waiting for your boxes to arrive and wondering what state they’ll be in, takeaways and washing your socks in the bathroom sink while you wait for those boxes and trying to introduce yourself to your neighbours in broken, unfamiliar language less they think you’re one those Brits.

Read more by Kerry Hudson

If there’s a sense history is repeating itself, it’s because it is. Almost five years to the day my husband and I packed up our studio flat, six boxes and our cat and left an ever-less sustainable London behind for the snowy, Christmas charms of Prague. Not a lot of thought went into that move and nor did it need to; we weren’t planning to stay for longer than a few months, we could work anywhere and, crucially, though Brexit had been agreed it had not yet been enforced so we had literal freedom of movement. Our move from the UK to Europe very much had the sense of Indiana Jones rolling under the descending stone door and snatching back his hat with seconds to spare.

While we only intended to stay for a few months, my much-longed-for but equally surprising pregnancy followed mere days later by the first case of Covid in the Czech Republic meant other plans. Faced with the choice of returning to what people were referring to as Plague Island on the last buses organised by the UK Embassy, we decided to stay. Months turned into years, we got our legal right of residency just before Brexit came into effect with what seemed to be the ease of applying for a supermarket loyalty card.

After two years back in the UK, trying and failing trying to get on the property ladder and fully comprehending the limitations of a health service we’d specifically returned for, we did it all again: boxes, ferrying the cat, that first thrilling, nervous taxi ride, the take-outs, flatpack and broken language. Except this time it was planned in the extreme. We have a four-year old but mostly because now we are post-Brexit and a move to Europe is infinitely more stressful and complicated.

My husband and child have Swiss citizenship which certainly makes the immigration aspect a little easier but coming from the UK means moving this time is like doing so blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back.

This time our cat's pet passport, acquired at great cost, declaring her microchipped and not a rabies risk used for her travel from London to Prague and Prague to Glasgow, was deemed worthless. Instead we needed a special EU certificate. Yes, it said the exact same thing about the exact same pet but rules are rules. That rule might have cost us £350 with our local vet had we not discovered there are a plethora of "travelling vets" who offer this service for a third of the price.

The next big difference? Shipping. It’s true that this time we had accumulated 25 boxes of family detritus compared to our six boxes of jeans, jumpers and books of our Prague move but we hadn’t expected to have to itemise each item within each box, "10 x knickers, 1 x lemon squeezer, 2 x talking Teletubbies (Lala and Po)" or try and guess the second-hand retail value for customs. Though it did remind me there’s fairly good resale margins in used underwear. We used a service called SendMyBag which allows you to send anything from a suitcase to a banjo. They have been prompt on online chat and led us through the customs documents - even if we did once again have to itemise our goods for Swedish customs, yes, we do have 110 books, yes they're all for personal use. So far so good and soon our boxes will come and we can stop washing our socks in the kitchen sinks and using rolled-up coats as pillows.

Déjà vu with packing up our belongings againDéjà vu with packing up our belongings again (Image: PA)

Unlike in Prague, our early days involved a trip to the migration centre where everyone was unstintingly kind and warm but where it was no doubt that as a so-called "trailing spouse" from the UK, I might be waiting quite some time for my "personal number" - something which you need for everything from booking a yoga class to accessing healthcare.

Like 62% of Scots I voted to remain in Europe and I still feel my cheeks burning when a Swede inevitably mentions "that Brexit issue" as I try to explain: not me and not my country.

Overall, I will take the extra customs measures and pet certificates. I’ll do yoga at home, depend on my spouse for my right to work and endure the slightly white-knuckle ride that is waiting for healthcare access as a chronically ill person because it is all a privilege. I’m aware of all the Scots who might want to relocate for so many reasons who cannot. I’m even more deeply aware of how frustrating and limiting that lack of right to movement and the opportunities that go with it for young people.

So a little extra red tape, a few forms, a little more of the unknown is worth it all. I’m delighted and proud to be a European again.

Kerry Hudson is an award-winning, best-selling novelist and memoirist and a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers. You can find her on Instagram and on Threads @ThatKerryHudson